The above results don't mean that you
shouldn't use methods. Generally your functions do
something, and the more they do the less significant the overhead of
the call itself becomes. This is because the calling time is
effectively fixed and usually creates a very small overhead in
comparison to the execution time of the method or function itself.
This is demonstrated by the next benchmark (see Example 13-16).

You can see that in the first and second benchmarks the difference
between the function and method calls is almost the same: 0.22 and
0.26 CPU clocks, respectively.

In cases where functions do very little work, the overhead might
become significant. If your goal is speed you might consider using
the function form, but if you write a large and
complicated application, it's much better to use the
method form, as it will make your code easier to
develop, maintain, and debug. Saving programmer time over the life of
a project may turn out to be the most significant cost factor.